


Sharp Bargaining

by thisbluespirit



Category: The Onedin Line (TV)
Genre: Boats and Ships, Community: genprompt_bingo, Episode: s01e01 The Wind Blows Free, Episode: s02e05 Yellow Jack, F/M, Marriage of Convenience, Victorian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-11
Updated: 2018-05-11
Packaged: 2019-05-05 07:02:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14612238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisbluespirit/pseuds/thisbluespirit
Summary: When James Onedin comes to buy her father's ship, Anne makes a bargain of necessity: he can have theCharlotte Rhodesas long as he takes her with it as his wife.  She regrets nothing.





	Sharp Bargaining

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Genprompt Bingo square "Disgust." (Round 14).

I. 

_Plain Jane – destined to wind up a spinster._ Anne had heard the words all too often, and she knew they were right. She was no fright, but when she looked in the glass she could see the truth for herself. Hadn’t the only man who had ever shown an interest in her run away to the other side of the world rather than marry her? 

So, when Captain Onedin came around trying to buy her father’s ship, she thought: why not? Why not make a bargain of herself in exchange for security? Anne was a pragmatist and she knew her future alone would be bleak after her father died. Her present wasn’t much to write home about as it was, given her father’s habit of pouring their money away on drink. 

James Onedin got the _Charlotte Rhodes_ and in return, he took Anne along with the ship as his wife. Like Anne, he was a pragmatist and he could recognise the value of Anne as a partner in his endeavour to establish a shipping line out of almost nothing but naked ambition. Anne regretted nothing.

On board the _Charlotte Rhodes_ , on the wedding night, that was a different matter and her courage failed her: she couldn’t look at James and see the disgust that he must overcome to touch her and to bed her. The words came back and shamed her again: _plain Jane, with her sallow complexion and unwomanly tendency to plain speaking to match_. She managed to try and stammer out the words; uncertain feelings to a rough sea captain with a ruthless greed for profit.

“A man who marries for beauty alone makes a bad bargain of it,” was all James said, and while Anne let him take her into his arms – an odd resting place but one she found herself well pleased with – it wasn’t what she wanted to hear. She wished he’d said that she was beautiful, at least to him. She couldn’t look then, couldn’t see maybe that it was only that such words didn’t come easy to him, either. Besides, it wasn’t the deal they had struck, and could she respect a man who indulged in flattery?

She wished he would, she wished she could, at least for a night.

 

II.

“James!” Anne, at the cabin door, stiffened into immediate outrage. “What have you been asking of poor Mr Baines?”

James turned, scowling; his mood worse than the weather. “Now don’t you start, Anne. The lad was shirking his tasks and someone had to get this ship moving again. That’s Baines’s duty.”

“But didn’t Mr Baines tell you?”

James gave a short shrug. “I didn’t have time to listen. What we need to is to get this ship back to Liverpool before I lose all my profits – again! This storm could have put us two days behind if we don’t make up the time.”

“I might have known,” said Anne, pulling away from him in instinctive distaste. “Mr Baines was only trying to tell you that the boy was sick.”

“Eh? What? Sick?”

Anne nodded. “Yes, and I don’t suppose your having Mr Baines punish him for slacking has cured the poor boy of the fever. Now, excuse me.”

“And where are you going?”

Anne glanced up in surprise. “Down below, to do what I can for him. I suspect the company will be considerably more humane. Certainly more civil!”

 

Later, as she tended to the boy, she felt a light touch on her shoulder and turned her head to see James.

“How is he?”

She smiled. “I don’t think it’s serious. He’ll pull through. The fever’s abating already.”

“Good. I hadn’t known. And there was the storm. You know how it is.”

“I do,” said Anne, glancing down again.

“Well, and I’ve said the same to Mr Baines, so I don’t know what more you want of me.”

Anne rose, letting him lead her out, only pausing to ask one of the other hands to call her if there was any further need. Out on deck again, she looked up at her husband. “Anything but a heart made of stone.”

James tightened his hold on her, although partly because the sea was still rough and Anne was not yet as used to shipboard life as he was, plus she was tired from sitting up with the boy and hampered by damp skirts. “I don’t,” he said in her ear; terse, and maybe even hurt. It was too dark to be certain. “I thought you knew that.”

She leant against him, biting down on her smile. “I know,” she said, stroking his sleeve as he bent down awkwardly to kiss her head. “I only wish you wouldn’t act as if you did.”

He had a heart; she knew that by now, but so often she feared what might become of it under the rule of those two great gods of his: profit and ambition.

 

III.

Pulling out of pain, hardly knowing where she was and ready to despair at last, there he was, back at her side. “James,” she said, and he caught hold of her hand, leaning his head in against hers. She wasn’t, it seemed, dying of the Yellow Fever – which would have been partly his doing – but neither of them had known that till this moment.

“I’m sorry,” he said, hanging onto her. “For all of it – I’m sorry! Love.”

Anne clutched at him, their estrangement ended. _Stop trying to be my conscience_ , he’d told her, as if this sort of thing wasn’t why she needed to be, from time to time when he thought it best to cut corners and forget moral considerations. She was too weak to say it, and she hardly needed to: eight men were dead because James Onedin had his profit in sight and thought the risk worth taking, and he was sorry enough for it now.

That was the danger with James. Most of the time, his gambits came off, and sometimes her objections only came from a lack of understanding of a sea life, but she was terrified as to what he might do to himself and to others next time he came up with a morally dubious money-making venture, guaranteed to set up the Onedin Line. She hung onto him through the last of the pain any how, knowing she could say nothing to give him a worse disgust of himself than he already had.

“James,” she said, as he laid his head against her, and she thread her fingers through his hair, and nearly laughed to herself at how she’d once wished he would call her beautiful, when it took her nearly dying to choke out the word love. She closed her eyes, managing a smile at the thought. _Oh, James…_

 

“Do you think Captain Onedin’s all right, ma’am?” said Baines. “I’ve never known him so – well, so civil. It’s not natural.”

Anne laughed. “He’s had a bad fright over that outbreak of Yellow Fever, that’s all it is. It won’t last, Captain Baines, but I don’t think it’ll do him or anyone else any harm while it does. The reverse, I should hope.”

“Ah, I see how it is,” he said, and gave her a wink as James entered the cabin.

“Anne,” James said, instantly at her side. “Should you be up and about? I’m sure you shouldn’t be here, at any rate. Captain Baines, why didn’t you send her home at once?”

Anne put a hand on his arm. “James, I’m quite well again now.”

“If you’re sure.”

“Of course I am.”

Captain Baines nodded to James. “It’s good to see Mrs Onedin back on her feet again, sir.”

“Yes,” said James, glancing down at Anne. “It is. Although I think perhaps this is enough excitement for the first day out of your bed, eh? Shall I take you home?”

Anne leant against him. “Yes, I think you’re right. But I _am _feeling a great deal better, I promise.”__

__“Well, let’s take you home and be certain of it, eh?” said James, his arm around her as he guided her up out of the master’s cabin._ _

__Anne let him: they’d come through a terrible storm and now they were resting in the calm that came after. That wouldn’t last, either, but there was no harm in taking pleasure in it while it did._ _


End file.
